The series of Online World Conferences on Soft Computing (WSC) is organized by the World Federation of Soft Computing (WFSC) and has become an established annual event in the academic calendar and was already held for the 8th time in 2003. Starting as a small workshop held at Nagoya University, Japan in 1994 it has - tured to the premier online event on soft computing in industrial applications. It has been hosted by the universities of Granada, Spain, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Berlin, Cran?eld University, Helsinki University of Technology and Nagoya University. The goal of WFSC is to promote soft computing across the world, by using the internet as a forum for virtual technical discussion and publishing at no cost to authors and participants. The of?cial journal of the World Federation on Soft Computing is the journal Applied Soft Computing. The 8th WSC Conference (WSC8) took place from September 29th to October 10th, 2003. Registered participants had the opportunity to follow and discuss the online presentations of authors from all over the world. Out of more than 60 subm- sions the program committee had accepted 27 papers for ?nal presentation at WSC8.